Wednesday, 1 July 2015

At some point, I liked to paint. I would fixate upon the deep blue sky and the moon, and dabble the size 2 paint brush on the giant white globe to embellish it with grey spots. Sometimes, there would be too much of spots. A fresh coat of white would be applied, I would look impatiently at it as the last drop of watery, muddy white would refuse to dry in the wringing humidity of Calcutta. Eventually a hair dryer would come to my rescue. The waves from the dryer would create impatient bursts of spontaneous clouds on the sky, unrealistic, and immature more than amateurish imprints. I would cover up that pool of smudged, roughed piece of sky with objects. I would add a kite, or a bird. I would add a train in the sky for all I cared. May be two moons. Instead of hiding that ugly patch on the gullible, collapsing, weak and exhausted paper, I embellished it with details that would create a new focus on the painting. My impatience would continue. I would question, yet hasten my shaky skills that stopped developing at childhood. I would try to draw the real world but invariably draw something more than what our real visions permit. The mountains after all had to look like mountains. Two moons, so what? The moon had to look like moon. Water paint would test my patience. I was lazy to wait, yet impatient to strive for the perfection I wished was attained. I let the water colours be. They could remain un-mingled, uncontaminated in those neat bottles. The colours on the palate could dry with ignorance, one on top of the other, undistinguished, unusable. I brought out crayons to finish the project faster. They would pale at the touch of water. Damn those puddles. I always made too much of them. I was always lazy to dab the cloth at the right time. I was always disgusted at the way the cheap papers gave way to small flakes that would make the puddles muddy, its foundations weak. The paper was so weak, I wish I had better paper! Eventually, with haste yet pride, too much details covering up weaknesses, the painting would be produced. It would not be as I had expected it to be, it was done with too much impatience. As if the ideas, as ideals, were already there, already concrete. I was only supposed to hastily fill colours and make it manifest. After all, we incorrigibly see the future in concrete terms, don't we? We promise, talk, expect, like it is ready-to-happen. Add hasty colours, blot, smudge, triumph to reach that ephemeral goal of imagined life that's never there.